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Blur: A Leading OpenSea Rival - But Will it Last?
Sandra Leow
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Key Takeaways
7 min read
  • Blur’s trading volume has been growing steadily since its inception and experienced an exponential rise after the first season of airdrop rewards on February 14.
  • Although Blur's volume and adoption consist of washtrading activities, its current volume, excluding washtrading, still exceeds that of OpenSea, suggesting some organic demand for the platform.
  • There are a total of ~16.7k distinct wash traders on Blur, compared to a total of 213k distinct users on the platform over its lifetime. Nevertheless, these airdrop farmers contribute to much of Blur's volume.
  • BLUR's token distribution was modeled after Uniswap's UNI token but with an additional cliff and longer vesting schedules. Approximately half of the supply is allocated to the community, with 22% allotted to the two rounds of airdrops.
  • BLUR operates on a zero trading fees and revenue model (currently). Comparatively, OpenSea’s revenue model is based on the 2.5% fees they generate. OpenSea has lowered its trading fees to 0% to compete with BLUR’s model.

Introduction

Blur is an NFT marketplace and aggregator. The platform has managed to take significant market share from its competitors since its launch, mainly driven by its rewards system and zero marketplace fees.

Volume Breakdown

The platform’s volume has been growing steadily since its launch and experienced an exponential surge after the first season of airdrop rewards which occurred on February 14, 2023. The first season of airdrop delivered a lot of value back to users of the platform, which incentivized these users to increase their interaction in preparation for the second season.

However, as a result of these rewards, much of the activity on the platform has been driven by washtrading as users try to...